


return

by anachronist



Series: a measure of time and effort [4]
Category: CLAMP - Works, xxxHoLic, モブサイコ100 | Mob Psycho 100
Genre: Archery, Gen, Kyuudo, Set during MP100 S2EP06, Supernatural Elements, please don't repost on other sites
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:21:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26926522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anachronist/pseuds/anachronist
Summary: “Sayaka-san. Do you think I’ll grow that tall?"“Maybe. You’ve plenty of time.”Mob starts learning archery.Meanwhile, Reigen learns how to deal with fame.
Series: a measure of time and effort [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758682
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mob's official height is 157.7 cm (5'2"). The suggested bow length for his height is the namisun (221 cm / 7'3")
> 
> The Sanjusangendo is the longest temple in Japan. The long-range contest down its 120 meter hallway is [an actual thing.](https://web-japan.org/kidsweb/virtual/yabusame/yabusame03.html) As someone who can't read the letters on the keyboard without glasses, it's doubly impressive.

The full length of Mob’s borrowed _namisun_ was longer than Sayaka was tall. 

“Wow,” Mob whispered, head tilted as he looked at the tip of the bow he held vertically up from the wooden floor. If he ever was interested in competing, this was the bow he’d use. Sayaka’s bamboo bow was even longer. The back of Mob’s neck hurt just from him looking at it. “Sayaka-san. Do you think I’ll grow that tall?”

“Maybe. You’ve plenty of time.” Sayaka held out his hand. The unstrung _namisun_ had been brought out for demonstration purposes only. “That used to be mine.”

“Really?”

“Really.” After placing the shorter bow back in its case, Sayaka gestured for Mob to have a seat to the side, and waited for the boy to get comfortable before speaking again. “Remember what I told you to look out for?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Sayaka took the arrows he’d set aside for this and walked to the side of the corridor: the traditional entry point for archers in a competition. The stretch of hallway between them and the target was sixty meters, the standard distance for a modern-day long distance contest and half of Sanjusangendo’s traditional one hundred and twenty. The Doumeki line may have recently produced four generations of archers, but that wasn't their main specialty, and it reflected on their family temple’s architecture. “Now. Watch me.”

000

Archery lessons didn’t start with him picking up the bow.

Mob, on Sayaka’s suggestion, asked Gouda for advice in improving his arm strength after the Body Improvement Club finished their cooldown stretches, shifting uncomfortably as the sounds of weights being put away and locker doors opening surrounded them.

“Well,” Gouda said with a thoughtful scratch of his chin, “upper body strength week’s coming up soon, but I guess we can start early. Any reason why?”

Mob, who perked up at the change in schedule, went back to gripping the hem of his shorts.

“Um,” he said. “Archery.”

“Archery?” asked Kumagawa, head poking out from behind the locker door where he was buttoning up his shirt.

“Archery,” Mob confirmed, surprised at his club mate’s interest. “My tutor said it helps with focus, so he’s going to teach me- ah!“

He shrank back as the rest of the club materialized behind Gouda with very intense expressions on their faces. Mob held his arms in front of him, overwhelmed.

“I’m not leaving the club,” he explained, panic edging his voice. They weren’t angry, were they? “I’ll still turn up after class. Just – it sounded like a good idea, and –“

“Mob.” Gouda clapped his shoulder, pausing as Mob yelped. “We’re with you every step of the way. But does this guy know what he’s doing? We don’t want you tearing a muscle.”

“Oh.” Mob suddenly felt lighter, almost dizzy with relief. They were okay with it! “ _Oh!_ Yes he does! Look, here’s what he lent me for training -”

From his locker, he retrieved a wood segment carved like the grip of a Japanese bow. It was around three feet long, with a thick length of rubber tied to its ends.

“It’s a rubber practice bow,” he explained, glowing with quiet pride that didn’t die down when he tried to demonstrate the correct draw posture. Mob still couldn’t draw the strap all the way even with his muscles loose from exercise.

By now, even the members of the Telepathy Club had crowded around him. Mob smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Huh.” Kurata looked at him from head to toe like a puzzle she found another piece to. “Cool. If you want, you can bring that next time we go to the karaoke. There’s enough room there if you wanna practice in between songs.”

“Just pace yourself,” Gouda said, clapping Mob’s shoulder before walking over to the whiteboard. The marker squeaked as he added a few arm exercises to their training regimen. “Remember your cooldown stretches when you get home, okay?”

Mob beamed.

000

Archery lessons didn’t continue with him picking up the bow.

He still struggled with homework, puzzling over English phrases and mathematical equations. Now, however, he practiced his footwork when holding a pencil and hunching over his desk became too much, trying to replicate the amazing state of tranquility Sayaka had shown him: elbows out, hands to his hips. A steady pace into his room from the door A wobbly turn on his heel. A bow to the wall where his target would be. Sliding steps - one, two, three - into position. Touch his knees to the floor and sit on his heels, managed by sticking a hasty hand out to maintain his balance before resuming position. Kneeling up, turning sideways to line up to the target. Back down to sitting on his heels. His thighs burned. What was next again? The bottom end of the bow, touching the floor. Mob pretended to notch the arrow by sliding his hand up, taking a breath and standing straight. Another slide of feet, widening his stance. Look to the target, maintaining tension. Or not maintaing tension - he'd miss it. Let his breath take away everything else in the room until all that existed was him, the target, him at the target, he who was the target, and - 

_Shoot._

Three arrows had sailed gracefully down the long hallway that first afternoon. Three distinct _thwack_ s echoed as they pierced the target in unhurried succession. Some kyuudo masters, Sayaka had explained, were so skilled they could shoot in the dark, and using an archery scope just wasn’t done.

Watching his tutor hadn’t answered that mystery, but it showed Mob answers to questions he hadn’t known he needed to ask.

The first shot had been about form. There was an awful lot of sitting and standing involved just to get into position, and Mob’s terrible posture worked against the confidence inherent in an archer’s straight-backed pose. His feet had to be spread at around a sixty-degree angle, roughly the length of the arrow he would be firing.

The second shot prepared him to expect recoil. The bow turned in Sayaka’s outstretched hand as the arrow flew from the string. Miraculously – or through the ease of practice – his form never wavered, gaze still affixed to the distant target.

Then came the third. This wasn’t a way Mob had thought to use his esper powers, but he found himself wishing that he should’ve watched Hanazawa closer when he fought Claw’s 7th Division. His friend and Sayaka couldn’t be any more different, brilliant liquid sunlight a very different shade to ocean-clear turquoise, but with an exhale that pulsed with the breath of the universe, the steadied glow around their confident forms in the split-second between making a decision and firing was…

_Amazing._

He could do that. _Mob_ could do that with consistent practice, Sayaka said, and Mob believed him.

He figured he had enough time to get _something_ right before he met up with Sayaka again for tutoring. After all, his evenings were less packed than they used to be now that he was taking a break from Spirits and Such.

Reigen was doing fine, wasn’t he? His website had a lot more reviews now, and it was hard to miss all the television and radio interviews he’s been doing lately.

000

“You told him to watch your aura? Not the target?”

“Yeah. Pass the salad.”

“Hmph.” There was a clink of porcelain on wood. “Is that what you yourself do in a contest?”

“No.” A pause. Another clink. “You didn’t ask my great-grandfather? Or my grandmother, for that matter.”

A hum. Silence. Reluctantly, “It never came up.”

“…hn.” Sayaka’s chopsticks clacked on the rim of his bowl. His teacup was soundless when it left the table, and on its return it made the faintest scrape. “It’s not about hitting the target. Shigeo will overthink if I told him to focus on his shots.”

“So he would. Well then, professor. Are you teaching him to take over for you?”

“Don’t be dense.” A cork popped. Over the sound of wine pouring into glasses, Sayaka continued speaking. “In Kyuudo, the spirit, the bow, and the body are one. Hesitation, unbalanced posture, irregular breathing – all of these will cause you to miss the target. Even your standing in a competition is irrelevant when you draw the string. For someone as anxious as Mob, the experience of just _being_ in the moment is valuable.”

“Because he won’t feel the pressure?”

“No. Because the pressure itself is immaterial.”

“How very zen.” Watanuki’s wry smile was audible. “Then, a toast to you and your student’s mindfulness.”

Two glasses clinked.

From the hallway, the phone rang. 

Sayaka grunted.

“At this hour?”

A sigh. The kiseru barely sounded when it touched its wooden tray.

“Probably Reigen. I’ll get it.”

“…hm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/626933630438211585/764375521885814804/unknown.png) is what a rubber/practice bow looks like. Thanks, Tsurune Kazemai
> 
> Ahh, writer's block. I'm beating you.
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated <3!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: There’s a mention of vomiting and description of what could be interpreted as a panic attack in the first part of the fic. If you’re not comfortable reading that, skip to the section after the first line break.

On the evening of his birthday, Reigen stumbled away from the bar, the streets and alleyways blurring together, a concrete maze lit with neon stores signs until he wound up in front of a familiar house flanked by two tall buildings, right smack in the middle of an entirely different city. How he had managed such a feat with a raging headache and the worst bout of nausea he’s experienced in a very long time was beyond him – it’s not like he could string two words together with his current state.

Speaking of strings, he couldn’t undo his shoelaces. Just looking down made his nausea worse, like an anchor that increased in density until it took down the entire ship with it, sinking into the depths of the ocean full of shameless and secretly regrettable life choices. His feet hurt, too, and it was a shame that the pain on both ends of his body didn’t cancel each other out to bring forth blessed equilibrium.

But he digressed.

Shoes.

He’d lose his shoes if he took them off in the middle of the sidewalk. Nice neighborhood or no, one could never really tell if there was a shoe-stealing punk lurking right around the corner. Or a shoe fetishist. Or a shoe-seeking salary man who wanted to swap pairs, leaving Reigen with fifteen-year-old vomit-filled loafers.

The shoes stayed on.

Not like he could keep walking anyway. His calves ached, his suit clung to his arms and back thanks to an uncomfortable layer of clammy sweat. Took him a few clumsy attempts to loosen his tie and collar, and he could feel the last of his strength leaving his limbs.

Made sense. He walked all the way to another town, after all. Wondered how that measured up in postal codes.

How he got here was a mystery for tomorrow’s Reigen to solve, and he slumped on the moon-topped gate post a few seconds before passing out, a lifetime’s habit of looking presentable thrown out the proverbial window. 

Man, that cocktail sure was something.

He was gonna have to shell out cash for dry cleaning this time, wasn’t he?

000

“Shhh!”

“Shhh!”

“Quiet!”

“Quiet!”

A young girl was echoing herself in his dream, the pleasant chirping of birds faint in the background. Reigen grumbled and turned over on the hard bed, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. His shoulder was stiff. Something tickled his cheek, and he couldn’t summon he strength to swat it away.

“He’s sleeping!”

“Sleeping!”

“In the morning!” the girl’s voice rang in chorus with herself, and her giggling doubled.

“That’s not being quiet,” a male voice cut in from the distance, amused. “We might as well have him over for breakfast now that he’s here, at whatever time he ends up waking. Bring him over, won’t you?”

“Okay!” she chimed, and Reigen felt himself being rudely hauled up from his bed by two pairs of arms, his knees still touching the ground.

“…uhhh?” Reigen cracked his eyes open into tiny slits, his groan trailing into a wide yawn that cracked his jaw. “M’not food.”

A snort. “Of course you’d focus on that, you overly confident Confidence Man.”

That voice sounded familiar. If only his tongue didn't feel like a dead slug, Reigen might've been able to hold a conversation. Instead, his mouth held the blegh aftertaste of sugary cocktail and bile. His breath probably stank. Figure one, this syllable: “Wha?”

Noxious fumes spewed out, the kind that anyone in the vicinity needed a hazmat suit to survive. The grass he collapsed on might just wilt. Judging by the sound of two girls shrieking and summoning a band of banshees into his eardrums - strictly metaphorical, of course, that was just usually someone shouting into the mic before the sound design happened - they agreed. Don't look so hot now, do you, Chief?

Still, a blob of dark color came into view. Maybe Reigen missed a spot in the yard.

“Sleep.” A cool fingertip was pressed to his forehead. Reigen closed his eyes in relief when the seismic pounding in his skull receded immediately, as if the folds of his brain halted their mission to contract themselves into peanut halves and were laid to rest on the clothes line. “We’ll talk when you wake up.”

“Sure.”

Reigen slept.

000

Reigen dreamt.

Three years ago, a lonely young boy wandered into the newly established Spirits and Such. He kept coming back even after countering Reigen’s super skilled and highly specialized employment of the Barnum Effect by turning the situation on its head when he used _telekinesis_ to stop the tea from spilling. Needless to say, Reigen hadn’t expected to run into a genuine esper when he first cooked up his business plan, and so he spent the first few evenings looking through his old research material.

 _I’ll show you how to use your powers,_ he had said to Mob, the kid starry-eyed and full of hope. Now, Reigen had a few ideas on how to bullshit through that, but there was nothing wrong with polishing his act. Besides, he needed a way to explain why he had a minor assisting him, the Powerful and Wise Reigen Arataka, greatest psychic of his generation.

That kid was special. _Mob_ was special, even if he was a plain-looking socially awkward boy who had problems catching up with his schoolwork. The opportunity to guide a promising youth like that was hard to pass up on, and Reigen found himself not wanting to disappoint. 

Unfortunately for him, rewatching Mogami Keiji’s interviews wasn’t going to cut it.

The first issue lay in their disparate personalities. Mogami was confident, charismatic, and an adult. Mob was three strikes out. 

The second problem was that Mogami only started being a career psychic in his early twenties. In other words, Reigen had no way of knowing how kid espers fit into the bigger picture, and he’d rather not get slammed by his competitors if he made a careless mistake.

And so Reigen did a little digging, and found himself looking at Tsuyuri Kohane’s picture beneath an incredibly defamatory article title in the newspaper’s entertainment section.

It wasn’t her apparent seriousness that bothered him, because stoic people had subtler facial expressions and body language to express emotions, and the photographer hadn’t thought to take a close-up. Rather, it was that she didn’t at all look happy _at all_ , more doll-like than human, and the media forgot that she was a kid in the first place. 

The news article, unfortunately, was the most _generous_ piece his online search churned out. The forums were even worse, from the casual mockery, to death threats and a couple of pervs that had their accounts banned and most revolting comments deleted (thanks 3rdeyesightblind, alienz4lyfe, xxxrainbowmagicxxx, fraudericksposure and a couple of others for giving them a written smackdown), to broken links to photos that supposedly showed the vandalized gate of the kid’s house.

After three hours of _that_ garbage, Reigen closed the browser tab in disgust before taking a shower.

So no, looking up Tsuyuri Kohane hadn’t taught him at all about how to deal with a child psychic, and Reigen honestly hoped she found happiness after having a fallout with her mom on live television. Rather, Reigen discovered what exactly _not_ to do, and decided early on that media appearances for his new student was a no-no. Not that he even considered that kind of exposure to begin with, since too much attention would cause all sorts of problems and the kid wasn’t equipped to handle that kind of stress, but the point was that a real life example backed him up.

Mob might be a socially awkward kid who easily agreed to being ripped off because he didn’t know any better, but Reigen would be damned if anyone picked on the boy for a gift he clearly didn’t know what to do with.

…not that Reigen had to bother with any of that now, of course.

The dream fractured.

He wasn’t needed anymore.

000

He no longer had a brain-breaking headache when he woke up, but the soul-crushing reminder he got from his dream made up for the pain quota.

Waking up with a downer mood _sucked._

When Reigen managed to open his eyes, he found himself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and the futon beneath him was far from the soft mattress he had at home. His tie, jacket, socks, and shoes were missing, but other than that he still had most of his clothes on. A folded set of plain jinbei had been lain out on a chair next to the bed, in case he wanted to change.

Huh. The barkeep probably added an extra shot of booze or something. Reigen _did_ say it was his birthday. Now the question was: whose house did he crash in? It wasn’t like he could name anyone, and it was too early to contend with the hollowness of that thought

“Oi.”

The deep voice came from somewhere behind him.

Reigen was too tired to roll over.

"Stop pretending to be asleep, dumbass," the mystery person said. "And fix things with Shigeo. You're supposed to be the adult here."

Okay, that was _rude._

Summoning his strength, Reigen placed a firm foot on the bed and rolled over to give the guy a piece of his mind, only to find that the sliding door was open an inch, the rest of the daylight filtered out by the rice paper on the panels. No person or silhouette in sight.

He squinted. Got on his knees and crawled over. Peeked out and discovered that these doors led to an enagawa facing a well-kept back yard. Slammed one panel open and looked to his left, then to the right. Left. Right. Left-right.

Zero people present. That voice was too close for someone to be shouting at him from the trees, and there was no one seated on the tree branches at the far end of the yard.

The creases on Reigen's face multiplied, making him look like a growly pug.

Sure he might've talked in his sleep, but how dare that creep peek in on a hungover person and mock his feelings!?

Reigen took a deep, deep, deep breath and cupped a hand to the side of his mouth.

"COME OUT AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE, ASSHOLE!"

Silence.

Reigen tried again.

"WHAT'S WRONG, CREEP? C'MON AND FACE ME LIKE A MAN. I JUST WANNA TALK."

Zero. Zitch. Nada. Not even the obnoxious thrum of a car engine zooming past in the neighborhood.

Reigen giggled to himself. Laughed. Cackled, and couldn't bring himself to regret the uncomfortable contraction of his abdomen. Emboldened, he got to his feet - unsteady, at first, and he took care to not lean too heavily on the shogi panels. At the back of his mind, he recognized he was probably insulting whoever took him in, but he didn't care at the moment. Bringing up his falling out with Mob? What kind of scumbag was that guy, kicking Reigen when he was already down?

"I'LL COUNT TO THREE. ONE. TWO. THR -"

The door panel behind him slammed open, revealing a Watanuki with a knife-like withering smile and a piercing glint on his eyeglasses to match.

"I hope you have a good explanation for this," Watanuki said, looming closer like the a guillotine blade in slow motion. He also, most notably, didn't sound like the guy Reigen was yelling at. _"You're scaring my client."_

Reigen's stomach dropped so far down it melted from the magma before its charred remains were launched into the stratosphere on the other side of the planet.

Ah, shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo this part's getting longer than expected. Sakurai, Reigen's VA, mentioned in an interview that Reigen doesn't appear in the story unless it's in relation to Mob, and it's an interesting point.
> 
> For the usernames mentioned here: idk if those are actual ones. And yes, don't ask why ancient forum posts somehow survived into this 4th Doumeki generation's time. The internet is forever, etc etc.
> 
> Comments are welcome and appreciated <3


End file.
